The invention relates to the technical sector of automatic-cut appliances for the dispensing of wiping materials of the tissue-paper type for hand-wiping, toilet-paper and general wiping and cleaning applications.
The Applicant has developed many appliances of this type which conventionally comprise a housing, a cover and a drum with an incorporated cutting blade, the said blade being capable of emerging from the drum during operation by virtue of means for the triggering and return of the drum. Lateral flanges of the housing are arranged so as to support the material reel which comes to bear either directly on the drum, according to the teaching of the Patent FR 2,322,215, or in a plane above the drum, without contact with the latter, as, for example, in the embodiment described in the Patent FR 2,799,946. In this specific implementation, a pressing roller is capable of ensuring pressure on the material strip at a given location, in addition to a second pressure zone defined towards the cutting zone of the material strip in the region of the drum. Thus, the loading reel may be mounted either so as to bear on the drum receiving the cutting mechanism or in a plane above the drum and without contact with the latter. These various types of appliances, in their basic concept and with various arrangements, are widely sold by the applicant worldwide through his licenses.
The Applicant therefore developed another automatic-cut appliance for the dispensing of wiping material, which is simplified in its implementation and is the subject of the Patent FR 2,828,084. In brief, the appliance comprises a basic housing with a bottom face and a lower face, having a cover, the said housing receiving, removably by snap connection, a cartridge defining a carrier structure comprising two transverse lateral flanges, a connecting plate arranged between the flanges and a front spacer block. The flanges, in their upper part, receive connectors for supporting the material reel and, in their lower part, receive two drums arranged side by side, without direct contact between them, the first drum being the blade-carrying drum, the second being the guide drum, and the said drums being arranged, at one of their ends facing one another, so as to receive toothed rings allowing their connection and their rotation relative to one another. The blade-carrying drum is arranged, moreover, with a third toothed ring cooperating with the mechanism for triggering the rotation of the drums, including a fixed cam. This blade-carrying arm of the cutting device includes a movable blade which cooperates with the abovementioned fixed cam, at the same time defining the path of the cutting blade. This specific appliance includes a gauge for ensuring the setting of the format of the material strip to be dispensed, either by means of a prior change of pinion or with the use of a sliding pinion displaceable so as to cooperate, depending on position, with such and such a gearwheel, in particular by means of an arrangement of the drum. The said sliding pinion is associated with a projecting index finger mounted on the movable shaft supporting the sliding pinion and so as to be displaced beforehand by the operator. This requires a prior setting of the format by the operator, with the appliance being opened.
In all the embodiments developed hitherto by the Applicant, the cutting device is independent of the arrangements and mechanisms allowing format selection.
Within the framework of his personal research, the Applicant wanted to improve the emergence of the cutting blade from the drum, with a smooth operation, this being adaptable to any type of dispensing appliance recalled above.
Another object sought after according to the invention was to incorporate an additional format selector device into the said cutting device, the said format selector device having a simplified construction, with a minimum number of parts, and being easier for the operator to set.
The object sought after by the Applicant was therefore to afford improvements to the cutting device and to the format selection device which can be incorporated in an optimized manner into existing appliances.
These objects and yet others may be gathered from the rest of the description.